Newsletter Summer Term 3 - 6.6.14

Newsletter

Summer Term 2014 - Newsletter 3

6th June 2014

Dear Parents/Carers,

Kagera Day

On Tuesday, children will be taking part in a series of workshop activities to find out what life is like in the village of Kagera in Tanzania. Kagera is the link diocese to St Edmundsbury and the event will be led by four members of the diocese education team who have all spent time in Kagera.

As part of the experience, the school lunch that day will be a change to the normal menu and will have special African style food with a mild chicken curry, beans, cabbage and tropical fruit. It would be great if any many children as possible could have a school meal that day to add to the day’s experience.

Coins for Carers week

Just a reminder next week is our Coins for Carers week. We are collecting 2p coins in school and next Friday we shall be seeing how far along the lines in the playground we can go.

African Adventure

Years 5 and 6 will be going on their residential trip to African Adventure at Sizewell Hall on the 16th - 20th June. I will be going with them (along with Mrs Beaton) so please be aware that I will not be able to respond to any emails or phone messages that week. The school will be in very safe hands in the care of our experienced team of teachers and a local headteacher has agreed to be ‘on standby’ in case of any major issues and I will be in regular phone contact. Year 2 will be taught by Mrs Fenning and Mrs Taplin on the days when I would normally be teaching them.

Behaviour Focus

We have become increasingly aware that recently some children are not showing the care and consideration for others that we expect and that has long been an important feature of the school. To support children to think of the impact of their actions on others, we are using the book ‘Have you filled a bucket today?’ by Carol McCloud. The book explains how everyone carries around an invisible bucket. How full your bucket is reflects how happy you are and how good you feel about yourself. We can fill others’ bucket through our actions - by the positive things we say or do. When we do this, the great thing is that we fill our own buckets too as it makes us feel good as well! However, sometimes people dip into others’ buckets by their actions too, but you can never fill your bucket by dipping into someone else’s. We want our school to be full of ‘bucket fillers’ and are already finding that this is providing really effective image and language for children to understand the impact of the behavioural choices they make. I highly recommend the book and parents may want to buy a copy to use at home.

This half term, we are also trialling the use of Golden Time as a reward for good behaviour throughout the week. Golden Time will be half an hour of special activities each Friday, chosen by the children. If children break a school rule, they will lose 5 minutes of Golden Time.

Hopefully these measures will have the desired impact and all our children will soon be showing the high level of consideration for others that we expect.

Homework Club

On Tuesday and Thursday lunchtimes, all children are now able to go to ‘Homework Club’ to complete any homework, including practising spellings or times tables. They will be able to have access to computers if needed, and support from Mrs Bell and Mrs Hammond. We hope that this will be an opportunity for children to make a positive choice to complete their homework at school if they find this easier than doing it at home.

Holiday Forms

As you know, I am no longer able to authorise any term time holidays. However, if you plan to take your children out of school for holiday you still need to fill in a holiday request form. I realise that this is somewhat nonsensical as I will turn down your request, but we need to do this for our records.